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Reader Comments on ‘Religion and Women’

By Nicholas Kristof January 9, 2010 10:18 pmJanuary 9, 2010 10:18 pm

My Sunday column looks at the the ways religions have tended to perpetuate and sanctify the oppression of women, and I’m sure readers will be eager to weigh in. I’m confident of that because in fact this column originated as a blog item last month. I dashed the blog item off after reading the Jimmy Carter speech, and I was impressed by the breadth and passion of the comments on the blog.

Questions about this issue always come up when my wife, Sheryl WuDunn, and I give talks about our new book. And in fact we discuss the issue a bit in the book, particularly in the context of Islam. Our take is that Muhammad himself was quite open-minded about women, and his youngest wife, Aisha, was arguably the first Islamic feminist. But Aisha lost a military battle against her rivals, and they cracked down on women and set the stage for more conservative interpretations of the role of women.
Likewise in Christianity, Jesus seems to have been quite respectful of women. But church elders retrenched and adopted an ideology to reduce the role of women in the young church (famously reinterpreting Mary Magdalen as a prostitute). Saint Paul probably was not quite the misogynist that he is sometimes portrayed, for the most chauvinist statements attributed to him are believed by scholars to have been inserted by later scribes or editors. But the church as a whole seems to have been disparaging of women in a way that Jesus was not.

Anyway, your turn to weigh in. Please be civil to each other and make evidence-based arguments rather than shouting.

UPDATE: Let me respond to a couple of points readers have made. Some readers think I’m too even-handed, noting that the biggest problem is with Islam. That’s definitely true, but most of my readers are not in Muslim countries, and I think there’s a danger of Westerners saying: oh, that’s their problem, without cleaning up our own house! Some people wonder about bride burnings; in India, approximately once every two hours, a young bride is burned to death because of dowry disputes or because her husband no longer wants her. Some ask about genital cutting: This occurs to about 3 million girls a year in Africa alone, mostly in Muslim families but also, especially in Ethiopia, in Christian ones. Some say that the problem isn’t churches oppressing women, it’s men oppressing women. I don’t buy that: so often, the worst oppressors are other women, who absorb and transmit the oppressive elements of the culture. It’s hard to determine what is religion and what is culture, but they certainly shape each other.

I understand well the role that all of the Abrahamic faiths have played in the continuing oppression of women throughout the existence of organized religion.

It’s part of the reason that I am an athiest. I grew up in the Bible Belt and it wasn’t easy to shrug off my Southern Baptist roots, but I did it.

There are many men in that region of the country who still believe that women are inferior and that it’s okay for men to hit women.

Domestic violence against women is also not treated as seriously in the South as it should be. One does not have to look far at home to find numerous examples of the way women are treated like second class citizens. How to resolve the problem in other parts of the world is beyond me.
I think Christoper Hitchens said it best in his book about religion: “God is Not Great …. How Religion Poisons Everything.”

Though few Christians realize it, or care, the nascent Jesus Movement was actually quite feminist in nature. Perhaps largely because the faith began by requiring adherents to embrace “the full yoke of the Torah,” which included circumcision – which Gentiles considered barbaric – evangelists like Paul (if he was a real person) found it easier to convert Gentile women than men. The leaders of many of the house churches – which was the only kind of churches or synagogues there were – were women. In many congregations or sects, particularly those with majority Gentile congregants, women were the equals of men and could be priests or whatever. The Gospel writers modeled Jesus partly on the Jewish wisdom goddess Sophia, and the Holy Spirit was definitely conceived as a female deity.

Jesus himself, especially in the Gospel of Luke, is a flaming feminist, at least for his time. The only person who bests Jesus in an argument is a woman – the Syrophoenician woman who demonstrates to him that his racist, Jews-only policy was inhumane. In all of the Gospels, the male disciples are portrayed as witless dunderheads, and all of them – not just Judas – betrayed Jesus. Only the women disciples showed up at the crucifixion. Christianity was designed to be a faith in which all were equal.

None of this sat well with the holy gentlemen who quickly took over the church, dropped the Torah requirements and happily embraced 1 Timothy (most scholars say NONE of 1 Timothy was written by the same person who wrote the 6 or 7 “authenticated” Pauline epistles) and some other anti-female verses. Early on, these misogynistic patriarchs began degrading women by citing Old Testament Scripture (since the Gospels hadn’t been written, or weren’t in circulation, or were ignored), and within a few centuries Augustine revived the ancient Jewish belief that women were “unclean” when he re-popularized the notion of original sin. Then Pope Gregory the Great, contra Scripture, decided Mary Magdalene was a prostitute. And so it went. Now the most popular Christian denominations in the U.S. treat women as second-class citizens, and the egalitarian sayings of Jesus and the tradition of the early church strike them as heretical.

It’s not the religion that holds women back. The principles are clear. It’s the interpreters, who happen to be men, of those principles. Same goes for wars and taking care of the poor. In general, people don’t practice what they preach.

I’m not an atheist, but any religion that treats women badly gets no help from me. And that would be most of them.

You left out the Mormons, by the way. They treat women like cattle, and have for more than a century. You also didn’t mention that Jimmy Carter resigned from the Southern Baptist Church precisely for their disrespect for women. You might also notice how closely these religions fit with the Republican Party. I don’t think that’s accidental.

As far as I can tell, the best religions in terms of women’s rights appear to be the Unitarians, the Wiccans and the Buddhists.

Kristoff resorts to criticizing religion by appealing to values outside of the religion. However, by definition, religion expounds ultimate value and cannot be subject to criticism from outside without rejecting the religion in toto.

For example, he says that religion has perpetuated and sanctified the oppression of women. But that statement can only be made if he is appealing to a value system OUTSIDE that religion in order to justify his claim of oppression.

For a religious adherent, the only question is “What does God say?” Once the religious text has been reliably interpreted, how can it be subject to outside criticism without putting one’s own idea of right and wrong ahead of God? If God actually says for example that women ARE inferior (and I am not saying he does), then who is Kristoff to criticize that?

I am not disagreeing with Kristoff’s premise that religion has oppressed women. I am saying that his objection is necessarily rooted in an appeal to a higher morality than the religion he is criticizing.

So my question for Kristoff is, from whence does he get his vision of women’s rights and human rights, if not religion.

Religion can only be “reformed” from within, not without. If in fact slavery is biblically wrong, it must be argued from the biblical text, not by “outsiders” appealing to a higher morality found outside the Bible because there can be no such higher morality.

I wanted to thank you and your wife Sheryl for researching and writing about the oppression of women. I am reading Half the Sky and the insights and sadness it leaves me with is astounding. I say astounding because although I grew up in a very authoritarian household…father was the boss and my mother had no voice…I became a feminist and a student/teacher of women’s studies. You both continue to amaze me as you uncover and break the silence that comes with keeping women as second class citizens. I am deeply appreciative of your work.

I think it’s ignorant of Kristof to state that brides are burned in India today. For all of India’s social divisions, the sati has actually been abolished and is no longer practiced there (though discrimination does exist like all other countries).

I don’t know why Kristof is passive aggressive and harsh about all things Indian/Hindu. For that matter, I can’t seem to wrap my head around why American columnists covering Hinduism portray it as some sort of barbaric faith. What they don’t seem to realize is that we Indian-Americans have to bear all the shame and embarrassment in front of other Americans

While I agree that far-sighted religious leaders and a progressive rank-and-file might lobby for women’s rights in the same way that, here and elsewhere, such ideological forces lobbied against slavery, I think that your comment that the second-class position of women set out in many religious derives ultimately from social circumstances is the telling one. Even in the fight against slavery, social and economic changes preceded a final victory.

The problem is that, in most traditional societies, women have no economic and political power. Until such circumstances change, even the most vigorous efforts by religious leaders to change the situation of women will not take root. The role of women will change when women are economically empowered.

I grew up in a traditional, Southern Italian, Catholic family. The rules and values imposed on women in that culture were incredibly restrictive; yet, my generation ignored many of those rules and traditions and went on to live productive lives, meeting men as equals in both marriage and in the workplace. The reason was simple; American society was far freer than that of Southern Italy; we girls went to college; and people hired and paid us to do “men’s” work. The Vatican line hasn’t changed (except for the fundamentalists, we ignore the Vatican); but society has.

I think that, to address the subjugation of women, we need to provide them with economic and educational opportunities. Microeconomics is one way to do this. Changes in religion and other ideologies will follow. Unfortunately, principles don’t persuade power so much as power creates principles.

I urge my fellow religionists to stay out of the arguments that are sure to follow in the comments. There is no defense for our religion except a determination to live out of our best principles. As the article reminds us, we have work to do.

Mr. Kristof, you mentioned that Muhammad owned slaves. Really? What is his name? Do you care to tell the full story of that slave(s)?
Human (read women) trafficking is the highest in the world. Do you think religion is responsible for that? None of the Muslim state is run by religious people except may be Iran. Yet you are blaming the religion of Islam for the bad things happening to women in Muslim countries. This in effect gives free ride to all the corrupt governments and corrupt middle class running those countries. Not helpful.
Here in the USA, women in their fifties are worst suffers in this Great Recession. Why? Plastic surgeons are extra busy helping women find a job to survive in this Great Recession. What type of dignity does it offer to the women?
Definitely many of us do not see the women’s issue the same way you wrote and your whole sale generalization is very unfortunate and very simplistic.

I agree with your commentary and applaud you for telling it like it is.

I tried to bring my children (2 boys and 1 girl) to protestant churches, but found I couldn’t expose them to the institutionalized sexism in good conscience. “The father, son and holy ghost” leave little room for women – could the holy ghost be female? Somehow, I doubt it. Also, listen to any reading from the Bible and most sermons – try counting the people mentioned and listen for any feminine pronouns! It was beyond me to understand how other women could participate in such pervasive bigotry towards women. When I spoke to the Episcopal minister about my concerns, he was, simply, hostile – even though he had a wife and daughter who I coached in soccer. He said, “this is how the church is and there is room for everyone.” I answered, “even if I can live with the sexism, what am I supposed to tell my children – that men are more important than women?” He replied, “then don’t attend church if that’s how you feel.” I took his advice and, although I am a spiritual person, I decided to put up with the loneliness that comes from not being part of a church community. My children have grown up to be healthy and compassionate adults who thank me for raising them without sexism. We remain religious, but outside the regressive bounds of organized religion.

I’m glad that a man is fighting this fight. I hope more women join you!

St. Paul had tremendous respect for the role of women in the churches, and there is evidence for this throughout his epistles. If you step back and look at the overall picture, it is a positive one.

And yes, he did seem to have some, shall, we say, old-fashioned ideas about marriage. Sheesh, he lived in the first century!

BUT St. Paul also probably expected the world to end, if not in his lifetime, then very soon afterwards. Thus to say that he condoned slavery is really an oversimplication. It might be fairer to say that he tolerated it until that time when God would bring in a renewed order and recreate our fallen sinful nature.

You forgot the Hindus who believe that if soul is born as a woman, she has to reincarnate at least one more time as a man to be enlightened.

Unfortunately, except for the enlightened “elders”, I don’t think church leaders, esp. catholic bishops, will give up power to women. Their backward beliefs are deeply entrenched.

I parted company with the church in eight grade when the nun informed us that if there was a problem with a birth, the foetus was automatically to be saved even if it resulted in the death of the mother.

Change has to come from the downtrodden women… extremely difficult since second class status is instilled from birth….but I don’t see the latest pope giving up an inch. In fact, he has begun a witch hunt against american nuns because they gave up their uniforms and moved into the community, thereby freeing themselves from convent rule and the long paternalistic arm of Rome.

Nick,
This was a good article, except for the end, where you coddle the early male founders and their followers and do special pleading for them. As long as a religion posits a gender for a single “God” and specifies that this gender is male, it’s impossible for that religion to be deeply empowering for women. You should interview Mary Daly or other theologians who discuss the possible female gender of “God” (after all, “Yhwh” may have been a feminine noun in ancient Hebrew) or who deny that “God” can have any gender at all.

Also, you should have mentioned Buddhism, where women are said to have twice as many desires and attachments as men and therefore to have a harder time achieving liberation. Some Mahayana Buddhist sects in Japan and elsewhere are based on gender equality, and the Zen attitude of “If you see the Buddha, kill the Buddha” also helps to break down all stereotypes, including androcentric prejudices. However, you go too far when you praise the Dalai Lama as a feminist. He may claim he is one, but that does not automatically make him one. He is, after all, a political as well as a religious leader, dispite his constant denials of his de facto dual role. For example, claims by nuns in Dharmasala in the Dalai Lama’s Vajrayana sect have sufaced which allege that they have been forced by male monks to participate as sex objects in secret Tantric Buddhist rites. This is certainly possible, since in Tantric Buddhist sutras (as opposed to Hindu Tantric sacred texts) women are regarded as the vehicles or means by which males can achieve enlightenment. In addition, the Dalai Lama strongly condemns same-sex love, although these condemnations have been deleted from English translations of his works, no doubt for political reasons.

Nick, I’d like to propose that you do your next book about gender and religion around the world. Some religions, such as shamanism, present many examples of gender equality and female leadership. Simply making ad hoc generalizations based mainly on examples from monotheistic religions is not enough. Please pull together many more facts and trends concerning gender roles in various religions in different kinds of societies and cultures around the world and then bring the different religions into a kind of global dialog on gender. Then the generalizations would begin to take on more weight.

I’m coming at this from a much different perspective than Mr. Kristoff or others commenting on his essay.

In the case of women being treated as inferior, it is simply religion codifying biology. As in many mating systems, males protect their female property by mate-guarding. Human males do the same. What is interesting is that female humans also mate guard. Although unusual in biology it is not unheard of . When there is significant paternal care of offspring, females compete for males and protect them from other females.

Of course, I’m not suggesting that since such behavior is common in nature, it is valid in human behavior. This would be an example of the naturalistic fallacy. Humans have found many “natural behaviors” to be morally repugnant, including rape and slavery,

Religion in patrilineal societies will alway be a dicey affair for women. Yes, there are bits and pieces of light – here and there- but the foundation of those religions – jewish, christian, muslim, is that god is a man, men are in charge, by right, and at the end of the day, that’s the way it is going to be.

Any rights women obtain, in such a culture, will be granted by the generosity of men. In many societies, women have protections, rights, and a measure of dignity, but only because they have been granted by men.

This is a not the same as “all men are created equal with certain inalienable rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

In “Three Cups of Tea,” Greg Mortenson’s book about how he built some eighty schools for children, and especially for girls, in Pakistan, Mr. Mortenson tells the story of being faced with local Islamic resistance to educating girls. Ultimately, the Supreme Council of Ayatollah in Qom, the ultimate authority to the World’s Shia (most of whom live in Iran), wrote the following to Mr. Mortenson.

“Our Holy Koran tells us all children should receive education, including our daughters and sisters. Your noble works follow the highest principles of Islam, to tend to the poor and sick. In the Holy Koran, there is no law to prohibit an infidel from providing assistance to our Muslim brothers and sisters. Therefore we direct all clerics in Pakistan to not interfere with your noble intentions. You have our permission, blessings and prayers.

It is important that these sorts of Supreme rulings be given wide publicity to counter the propaganda and lies of thugs and petty tyrants masquerading as religious leaders.

This is why thousands of the Sunni madrassa’s are built and are so heavily funded by Saudi and Kuwaiti Islamic fundamentalist wahhabi Islamic groups. Their students are then told to go an take four wives. The goal is to overwhelm the Islamic world with their false Islamic teachings that make women domestic slaves. These are the Taliban.

Many cultural anthropologists believe that religions arose in order to promote civilized behavior, as humans moved from small hunter-gatherer bands to settle in larger agrarian communities. It should be no surprise that greedy people quickly moved to corrupt religion by using it to oppress others – Spaniards “saving” New World natives, Americans bringing “civilization” to our own indigenous peoples, or Catholics and Protestants slugging it out over the centuries. The whole idea is that if my faith is right and yours is wrong, I am justified in taking your stuff. And if the Bible and other sacred works say that women are inferior, then we can take their stuff too. The scenario is always the same: make other human beings “different” and then we get a bigger share of the pie. Confession: like Yvette, I am an atheist too. Studying history has made me one.

Women are the ones who have kept many churches open in the U.S. Go to any church on Sunday and it will have a majority of women in attendance. One problem with women in leadership roles seems to be that men are more reluctant to assume roles that women take over. Many of the Bible references to women must be taken in the context of the situation at that time. Women had a long struggle to achieve a status of equality, and for a women in the 1st century to act too powerful would probably have been very unwise.

Faith is strange, it strengthens one but also makes one captive of specific ideas or dogmas. It happens almost unconsciously, one reads the bible or the Gita one comes across a disturbing passage or verse and makes one wonder. In the Gita there is a sanskrit verse that states that a womens birth is inferior to that of the man!
As a young girl I found that very dissapointing for the Gita is the foremost text in hinduism. Another interesting aspect of hinduism is the emphasis on the “devi” figure of a young “pure” girl as having unlimited power. Again the brahmins over the ages degraded women by praying to the devi figure but in practice discriminating against women in marriage, inheritance and in social standing. A woman without a man becomes suspect, her character is questioned and she is subject to attacks from all sides.
As a religious person I choose passages which inspire and promote human values rather than gender specific roles.

The oppression of women has been taking place well before Jesus, Moses or Abraham walked the Earth. Instead of singling out religion, it should be pointed out that human society for thousand years all over the earth has been complicit in the oppression of women.

For example in China female infanticide is practiced widely. And when was the last time you saw a woman in the upper echelons of the Chinese government? Of course communism in China has “liberated” women, but its still a male dominated society keeping women at a distance. None of these attitudes can be blamed on religion, since the communist party is officially atheist.

Many religions preach tolerance and equality, and communists proclaim the liberation of all people from oppression, but in the end both succumb to the human weakness to make others inferior to themselves.

Mr. Kristof, why do you always have to be so bigoted in your articles? Why can’t you tolerate different cultures with different traditions? Refusing to tolerate cultures that subjugate women is just as bigoted as hating black people or despising Muslims.

You have this idea that Western liberalism is the only correct political philosophy and that all other philosophies — especially those in predominately black countries (coincidence?) — are savage and inhumane.

You call yourself a liberal. Why don’t you start acting like one and stop trying to foist your culture on other people?

Hillary Clinton gave an inspired speech at the State Department yesterday (1-8-2010) on the world’s commitment to gender equality, women’s and girls’ health and human rights. You will be wonderfully inspired.//www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2010/01/135001.htm

From my point of view, prohibitions against contraception promulgated by some religions, most notably the Catholic Church, actually cause the deaths in childbirth of hundreds of thousands of women and of their too small unhealthy infants, and are the direct cause of some, probably many, of the 20 million illegal and unsafe abortions in the world every year which also result in injury and death. This is very sad indeed.

I am surprised that you failed to mention female genital mutilation, possibly the most outrageous of abuses of women — and so insidious that it has acquired the support of the older women in the tribes, who have long ago internalized the idea that this is a natural and needed violation of their helpless daughters’ bodies.

There is an extraordinary delusion common to the western “progressive” elites, to wit: that anyone gives a flying *damn* about their views. Outside of your miniscule (considering world population) numbers and your media, absolutely no one cares what *you people* think about “women” or “religion.” You think Congolese child-rapists or true-believer Islamist women give a damn about what someone named Jimmy Carter says? if you do, you are savagely deluded.

The ideas and cultural practices of the ancient religions have the deepest roots. It is not for you liberal whites to decide which of these deep practices you can abide. Indeed, if you want to change these utterly fundamental practices and beliefs, better learn how to use a gun. As an atheistic Jew, I have little good to say about Muslims or, for that matter, Congolese infant-rapists. But I am here to preach *reality.*

You need to understand that your chatter and your canting will change nothing. There has been an overly long time of peace between the large powers. It cannot last. This period of decadence is characterized by the exhausted western elites’ desire to legislate lifestyles across the globe. I understand that you people have nothing better to do than imagine yourselves the proper legislators of the earth, but you must understand facts: there is no way to change these deep and powerful cultural practices unless you are willing *to kill* large groups of people. The true-believer Muslims, for example, would very cheerfully kill you for your views on women, homosexuality, free speech, etc.

But your commitment to pacifism means you have nothing beyond chatter and cant to persuade these vigorous and determined peoples. Just as you saw China laugh at your pretensions to control the use of fossil fuels as a sacrifice to the offended Gaia, you will find very few Congolese baby-rapists and I dare say even fewer Muslims who will be interested in what the preposterously named “Elders” have to say. Sorry. Want change? you will need to change your views on bloodletting. These are the facts. Now continue your canting in the echo-chamber.

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This blog expands on Nicholas Kristof’s twice-weekly columns, sharing thoughts that shape the writing but don’t always make it into the 800-word text. It’s also the place where readers make their voices heard.